Cisco Collaboration Summit 2013

Last week Cisco hosted their 2013 Collaboration Summit where Rowan Trollope, SVP and GM of the Cisco Collaboration Technology Group, delivered the key note address which included Cisco’s collaboration strategy as well as new product announcements.

Trollope started with memories of his first computer; how technology at work surpassed what was available to him at home. In the past few years though, with the advent of the smartphones and tablets along with Facebook and other social networking sites, technology available to consumers at home has surpassed the technology available at work which has led to a sense of frustration. There is significant opportunity for advancement in the enterprise technology space and Trollope stated that Cisco is working “to make the technology we have at work as great or better than the technology we have at home.”

Trollope also stated that at Cisco, he not only had access to a lot of different collaboration technologies but the opportunity to use them. Unfortunately, the majority of people do not have this opportunity due to different barriers; a lack of access, cost of implementation and complexity to name a few. Therefore, Cisco is committing to three goals; to make technology easier to use, easier to buy and to bring it all together. By making the technology more accessible, reducing the complexity, and delivering it at the right price more people will be able to take advantages of the benefits collaboration has to offer.

The goal, in Trollope’s words, is to “Make Collaboration Simple” and drive the next innovation cycle. Cisco will do this in the following ways:

User experience: integrating the technologies they have and making them more intuitive

IT support: making the technology easy to deploy, manage, and run

Partners: making it easy to buy, sell and support Cisco solutions

Finally, Trollope announced and demonstrated a few new products. Two key themes were cloud and mobility; hide the complexity of technology in the cloud and embrace mobility in the enterprise. A few noteworthy announcements include:

Collaboration Systems Release: Cisco is testing everything together to make sure all components works together.

Cisco Expressway: Offers a secure tunnel into collaboration technologies without having to VPN into the network.

Cisco Jabber Guest: Turns virtual customer service into a reality by allowing organizations to integrate video into their website.

Intelligent Proximity App (currently in testing): Provides the ability for someone to walk into a room and pull the content to a smartphone or tablet. Users can also bring their personal directory with them and use it on the intelligent device in the room.

In closing, Trollope said “You ain’t seen nothing yet!” The products being unveiled represent a new direction in collaboration technologies and I, for one, can’t wait to see what they come out with next!